The Monstrumologist (The Monstrumologist #1)(63)

“He’s the murderer! An eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth!”

“ No, it is God’s business to judge him, not yours.”

Morgan moved slowly toward him as he spoke, and Malachi responded by shoving the end of the pistol hard into Warthrop’s skull. The boy’s body vibrated with the force of his passion.

“Not another step! I’ll do it. I swear I will do it!”

The violence of his tremors caused the gun’s muzzle to scrape across Warthrop’s forehead, and bright blood welled around the steel that tore through the tender skin.

Without stopping to think-for if I had, I might not have risked both our lives-I brushed past Morgan and went to my knees before them, the tormented Malachi and the prostrate Warthrop, and the boy turned his tear-stained face, contorted with anger and bewilderment, toward mine beseechingly, as if in my eyes he might find the answer to that unspeakable, unanswerable question: Why?

“He took everything from me, Will!” he whispered.

“And you would take everything from me,” I answered.

I reached for the hand that held the gun. He flinched. His finger tightened on the trigger. I froze.

“He is all I have,” I said, for it was true.

With one hand I grasped his shaking wrist; with the other I eased the firearm from his quivering fingers. In two strides Morgan was beside me, and he snatched the gun from me and handed it to the abashed O’Brien.

“Exercise a bit of care with this next time,” he snapped.

I placed my hand, now afflicted with the same palsy affecting Malachi, upon his shoulder. He fell away from the doctor and into my arms, burying his face into my chest, his thin frame wracked with sobs. The doctor struggled to his feet, leaned on the worktable, and pressed his handkerchief against the wound on his forehead. His face was pale, spotted with blood. He murmured, “If I had known-”

“You knew enough,” shot back Morgan. “And now you will confess all of it, Pellinore, everything, or I will arrest you, tonight, without delay.”

The doctor nodded. His eyes were upon the miserable Malachi Stinnet, cradled in my arms. “There is something I should show you,” he said to Morgan. “But only you, Robert. I believe…” He caught himself. “In my judgment…” Caught himself again. He cleared his throat. “It would not be in Malachi’s best interest to see it.”

I knew where they were going, of course, and could not have agreed more with the doctor: It most definitely would not have been in Malachi’s best interest to see what hung in the monstrumologist’s basement. The beefy O’Brien started to follow them out, but Morgan ordered him to remain with us, and so he lingered in the doorway, looking none too happy about it, glowering across the room at me as if I were somehow responsible for the bloody turn of events. Perhaps I was, in part, and at that moment I certainly felt that way. The shadow of the doctor’s guilt stretched long, and though I had questioned him the night of our mad flight from the cemetery, I had not pressed the matter to its utmost. The doctor, after all, hadn’t locked me in my room or chained me to a newel. I could have run straight to the constable’s that night and sounded the alarm, and I did not. The mitigating factors-my age, my subservient status, my bows to the doctor’s superior intellect and the maturity of his judgment-seemed insubstantial in the presence of Malachi’s pain, his unutterable loss.

Looking up, my own vision clouded by sorrow for his plight and-I confess-for my own, I made out O’Brien glaring down at me, his upper lip twisted into a derisive snarl.

“I hope he hangs for this,” he said.

I looked away, into Malachi’s eyes, red-rimmed and wide open. He whispered, “Did you know too?”

I nodded. Lying, the doctor had taught me, was the worst kind of buffoonery.

“Yes.”

They returned after what seemed like hours, but it could not have been more than a few minutes. All color had drained from Morgan’s owlish face, and his locomotion to the chair into which he carefully lowered himself was reminiscent of the stiff and awkward movements of a shell-shocked soldier. With trembling fingers he packed his pipe, and two attempts it took to light it. Warthrop, too, having so recently teetered upon death’s black abyss, seemed shaken and stunned, the round wound on his forehead caked in dried blood, perfectly centered an inch above his eyes, like the mark of Cain.

“Will Henry,” he said quietly. “Take Malachi upstairs to one of the spare rooms.”

“Yes, sir,” I replied at once. I helped Malachi to his feet, pulling his arm over my shoulders while he leaned against me, and together we shuffled out of the room, my knees nearing buckling under his weight; he was a good head taller than I. Up the stairs I lugged him, and into the nearest bedroom, the room in which the nude body of Alistair Warthrop had been found five years before. I eased him onto the mattress, where he, like the monstrumologist’s father, rolled himself into a miserable ball, until his knees nearly brushed his chin. I closed the door and collapsed into the chair beside the bed to catch my breath.

“I should not have come here,” he said.

I nodded in response to this obvious observation.

“He offered to take me to his house,” he went on, referring to Morgan. “For I have no place else to go.”

“You have no other family?” I asked.

“All my family is dead.”